


Cobs, Conmen & Clouds

by stanchezsloppyseconds



Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Minor Character Death, cob phobia, planet where everything is a cob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:12:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9808724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stanchezsloppyseconds/pseuds/stanchezsloppyseconds
Summary: He pushed down the vivid memory of a lost kid crying for a mother they couldn’t find in the belly of a maze, like he was swallowing back down bile. Now was not a good time to worry about old nightmares. He had far more pressing issues to concern himself with. Like why the fuck was he back on this hellscape of a cob planet? And why was Stanley Pines there with him?Done for an autumn themed prompt "Stanchez + corn maze" (I clearly had waaaaay too much fun here. This one is pretty packed full of personal headcanons… and cobs.)





	

 

He pushed down the vivid memory of a lost kid crying for a mother they couldn’t find in the belly of a maze, like he was swallowing back down bile. Now was not a good time to worry about old nightmares. He had far more pressing issues to concern himself with. Like why the fuck was he back on this hellscape of a cob planet?

“Wa-wake up, Stanley, c-common wake up.” Rick shook the other man’s shoulder as he tried to keep himself from panicking. He needed someone to ground him before he went off the rails, and right now the only other person around was his ex partner in crime. There was little explanation as to why this was the case, seeing as he hadn’t seen or heard from Stanley Pines in well over seven years, but here they were, stranded on a deathtrap together, just like the old days.

“Uhhg my head- Rrick? What the hell are you- where are we?” Stan asked groggily as he sat up. He was dressed in the same tacky red velvet suit and question mark covered shirt he’d worn the last time Rick had dropped in on him. Even the untied bowtie and dishevelled shirt buttons looked the same, but he looked a good ten years older in it than he had that day.

“C-cobs. It’s all cobs, Stanley. We need to get outta here n-nnn-now.” Rick said glancing around nervously.

“What are you talking ab-” Stan paused mid word as he looked around “Christ is this one of your crazy space things? Did you drunkenly pull me along on some adventure last night and get us lost in space?”

“I-I don’t think- I don’t re-remember. But I wouldn’t fff-fucking bring us here.” Rick said as he tried to focus on Stan’s face instead of his surroundings. The other man was busy looking at everything, but everything else was on a cob and all Rick cared to do was count the laughter lines that had been added to Stan’s face since he’d last seen him.

“Yeesh, you weren’t kidding about the cobs thing.” Stan exclaimed as he picked up a clump of cobbed dirt from the ground before Rick knocked it from his hand.

“Don’t touch it un-unless you have to. It could be ca-catching.” Rick barked trying to bite back the panic in his voice and failing miserably.

“Hey.” Stan commanded with a stern gentleness as both his large rough hands cupped Rick’s face, pulling his attention back to him, “Breath and just focus on me. You’re genius brain is not gonna save my dumbass if you’re busy having a panic attack over a childhood phobia.”

For a moment everything else seemed to fade into a blurry haze as soft brown eyes met Rick’s with concern “That’s it. There you go. You gonna be alright?”

With the only other person left in the multiverse who knew the story behind that old nightmare sitting in front of him, Rick swallowed hard, then nodded softly. He was going to get them out of here.

“We need to find a ship. Something to get us off this planet.” Rick said in a much steadier voice, “We must have got here somehow. That’s our best bet for getting home.”

“You don’t just have your portal gun on you?” Stan asked.

“Must have dropped it when we crashed landed” Rick said with a shrug as he patted his empty labcoat down to prove his point.

“Alright then, we can’t have strayed too far from the crash site given how drunk we were, yeah? Maybe it’s over those co- er heh hills.” Stan corrected himself quickly with a smile. That seemed logical enough, so Rick went along with it. He didn’t recall how they’d gotten here. Hell, he didn’t even recall deciding to go visit Stan. The easiest conclusion was that he’d been black out drunk again. He just hoped he hadn’t forgotten anything worth remembering.

Sure enough, just over the cobbed hills Stan had pointed out was a valley full of cob wheat and Rick’s crashed space ship. A few feet from the broken window was an equally broken portal gun.

“Fuck.” Rick cursed as he inspected the damage.

“Can it be repaired?” Stan asked with a tight frown.

“Maybe, if I can find a way to weld the hole in the window shut, and you can bang out that dent in the left thruster.” Rick muttered under his breath, “The engine seems to be relatively undamaged but navigation might be shot.”

“I meant the portal gun. Can it be fixed?” Stan asked again. “What does it need to run?”

Pausing in his inspection of the ship, Rick squinted at Stan.

“Why are you so fixated on that? I can repair it later. The ship’s a faster solution.” There was a hint of mistrust in Rick’s voice. Something was off.

“But you promised last night you’d help me.” Stan looked a tad hurt, but mostly furious as he balled his hands into tight fists. “Remember? You said you would help me find my brother! That’s the only reason I came on this stupid trip with you!”

“I was drunk out of mm-my mind! You know I-I get emotional and say dumb shit I don’t mean when I’m like that, Lee.”  Rick yelled back exasperatedly rolling his eyes. Something was off.

That something finally clicked as he paused and looked up.

The clouds were a soft whisking cirrostratus.

That was wrong.

They should have been cobs.

Well shit.

“Stanley,” Rick said calmly looking back at his past partner, “I’m sorry. I’ll fix the portal gun. I-I just need one thing from you first.”

“Anything for you ol’ pal” Stan chuckled, the soft laughter lines soothing his previous look of outrage.

“Just k-kiss me good luck.” Rick said as he yanked on the red velvet lapel of Stan’s jacket.

Their lips met quick and hard and hungrily. Just like they had that night they’d last seen each other. For a moment Rick marveled at how they’d even gotten the minuscule details right. The prick of rough stubble. The smell of just a tad too much cheap aftershave. The taste of toffee peanuts. It was almost too perfect. He let the kiss linger for longer than Stan would have been comfortable with.

Then he felt Stan press the broken portal gun into his hands and Rick pulled away with a heavy sigh. He made quick work of modifying the gun with spare pieces from the ship as he felt Stan watching curiously from over his shoulder. When he was done he held it up for inspection. It felt real enough, but there was only one way to be sure.

“It looks different than normal, you sure it’ll work?” Stan asked as he looked perplexed at the modified gun.

“No. But it’ll do what I need it to.” Rick flinched slightly as he pointed it at Stanley and fired.

The simulation stared at him in frozen horror for a moment before it shattered into pixels that vanished into the already dematerializing landscape. With a gasp of shock the alien who’d been monitoring the machine collapsed dead to the floor clutching the gaping hole the blast from the modified gun had left in him.

Pulling the electrodes attached to his temples off and stepping down from the simulation platform, Rick made quick work of the two panicked guards, and then tossed aside the drained rejigged portal gun. Alarms were blaring and back up would no doubt be there soon.

He had to give it to them though for pulling such a high end simulation. Inducing a deep rem nightmare and then having the balls to try to get information out of him using residual memories to recreate the one person who could best talk him down from that ledge of phobia? It was the best stunt they’d pulled yet, and had they spent a little more resources on rendering a matte painting of cob clouds they might have even gotten him to rebuild that broken gun they’d no doubt nabbed from another dead Rick. The council clean up crew was getting sloppy. Whoever’s bright idea this stunt belonged to was about to regret they’d dared to poke that deep into Rick Sanchez’s head looking for answers they weren’t meant to find. He’d had enough of mind games. It was time to fight back, and when he was through they’d wish their nightmares were just a simulation too.


End file.
